The US government on Tuesday “condemned” the Ecuadorian police raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glass, citing a “violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”

“We have reviewed the video footage from the closed circuit surveillance of the Mexican embassy and we believe these actions were reprehensible,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

“The government of Ecuador disregarded its obligation under international law, as a host country, to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions,” he added.

Ecuador’s former vice president, a close associate of socialist President Rafael Correa, accused of misusing public money intended to rebuild coastal towns after a devastating 2016 earthquake, turned himself in at the Mexican embassy in Quito in December. Mexico has announced that it is granting political asylum to Mr. Glass, who has characterized the criminal charges against him as politically motivated.

The government of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has described as “illegal” the granting of political asylum to the former vice president, who has already been sentenced to serve prison terms twice in other corruption cases.

Ecuadorian police officers stormed the embassy premises on Friday and arrested him. This violation of international law on diplomatic missions triggered the severance of diplomatic relations between the two states and an international outcry.

The US official also called on Ecuador to “work with Mexico to find a solution to this diplomatic dispute” and expressed satisfaction that a meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) will be held on the issue within the week.

Remarkably, the US President Sullivan’s SEA statements came a few hours after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador complained that his country was being left alone by its major trading and political partners, above all the US and Canada, on this issue. He described their reactions as “vague” and “infuriating”.

“We are economic and trade partners, we are neighbors, and their position is very uncertain as of now,” President López Obrador said at a press conference yesterday morning after showing for the first time footage of the attack on mission chief Roberto Canseco inside the embassy.

Neither the Americans nor the Canadians “condemned the invasion and attack (…) on our embassy”, insisted the head of state. Canada in particular “went so far as to say it was an ‘alleged’ violation of international law”, something “which we do not accept”, added Mr López Obrador, demanding Washington and Ottawa to “express themselves clearly”.